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“Clarity is power, and knowing where you’re going is the first step in getting anywhere.”

Adair Cates, Author of, Live With Intention

When I work with clients all over the world, I often talk about the imaginary sport of Blindfolded Archery. This is where people are trying to aim at a target with blindfolds on. As you can imagine, blindfolded archery can be very messy!

If you don’t know what you’re aiming for, the consequences can be disastrous!

While this is a silly example, it’s the way so many people are actually living their lives. It’s easy to lose focus, get distracted, overwhelmed, and live unconsciously.

The end of the year is a natural time for us to step back and reflect on our lives and for some, a chance to re-align to our goals and dreams.

Many of our dreams stay as dreams and every year we go through the same ritual of saying: “Next year is going to be different…I’m going to make some changes!” But nothing ever changes.

A New Year always brings with it a feeling of hope and the opportunity to show up a little different. I love the metaphor my primary school Headmistress used to share with us every January, when we returned to school: She believed that each New Year was like receiving a new exercise book or journal to write in. A brand new book, never been used before. Her metaphor gave us permission to show up differently or to begin again…You can almost smell the pages of the new book as you open it for the first time. Each new page is blank and it’s up to YOU to create each day and fill the pages with content, as your year unfolds. In other words – you get to create YOUR year!

You are the author of the next year in your life!

A New Year represents new beginnings. These might be big or small – it doesn’t matter:

• You can start fresh and make things different from what has been.

• You can set a new course or direction.

• You can show up a little differently (at work or at home).

• You can do something you’ve never done before.

• You can reinvent yourself.

• You can restart a hobby or interest.

Whatever your goals are here are 5 ways to get clear for the New Year and make things happen:

1. GET CLEAR ON WHAT YOU WANT. For any goal or dream to have a chance of success, the first step is that you have to get REALLY clear about what you want and set an intention (or re-align to your intention if you’ve gone off track). Write it down – this does make a difference! The challenge for many of us is that we start off with good intentions. New Year’s Resolutions are often motivated by ‘musts’ or ‘shoulds’ and remain in our heads on a list of things to do. So write down WHY do you want it!

2. TEST YOUR COMMITMENT. Once you have set an intention you then have to make a 100% commitment to the outcome if you really want it to happen. Not a 60% or a 90% commitment. Otherwise, you’ll just do things when it’s convenient and your heart won’t be in it. Buy a notebook and write your intention on the first page. Use your blank pages to focus on your goal and record your progress. Writing down your goals helps you to commit to them because it keeps them in your mind.

3. GET STARTED. Talking about it won’t make it happen! You have to get moving and take action! You might set an intention and then get scared or bogged down in the detail before you begin. You know what you need to do but you never seem to get round to doing it. The key to being successful is simply to BEGIN… Focus on the first step. Big things get done in small chunks. It’s ALL about Getting Started!

4. TAKE CONSISTENT ACTION. Tony Robbins, author and motivational speaker says: ”In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.” Conscious deliberate action is essential if you want to make your intentionbecome real. Track this weekly and schedule time for small do-able activities towards your goal. Create a habit to make it happen!

5. GET SUPPORT TO HELP YOU ALONG THE WAY. Having someone on your side is extremely powerful. A coach can help you to stop playing small and start creating real forward motion towards your goals. They will help you to work through any roadblocks as you encounter them and keep you accountable (email me at info@elainebaileyinternational.com for a complimentary Clarity Call).

Don’t Make Assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

~ Miguel Angel Ruiz

As human beings, we all make assumptions and believe them to be true. We can’t help ourselves! We are barely conscious of most of the assumptions we carry with us because they feel so real.

We make assumptions based on our (sometimes limited) observations of the behavior of others, past experience and what we perceive they might be thinking. Through our filters we distort the messages and create labels for the other person such as he or she is no good at…. (sales, managing projects, etc).

You believe this label to be real and start to develop a fixed mindset around it. Sub-consciously you will look for evidence to support your original assumption. In other words, we see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear, filtering out anything that is contrary to our assumption.

Assumptions can lead to misunderstandings and a lack of communication, because you think you already KNOW the answer or understand what is going on. You can also take things personally and feel awkward about a situation so you ignore it, or gossip about it to others while avoiding contact with the person concerned. You are frightened to ask for direct clarification by having a conversation.

Many of our assumptions remain untested, yet we believe them to be true and use them as a benchmark to discount people. This limits their future potential and any possibilities because we’ve already labeled them.

In other words, it’s easy to write someone off, not include them in something, and ignore their potential for learning and growth.

Assumptions are dangerous!

In a business context, one thing that greatly reduces the creativity, performance and growth of your team are the assumptions that you make.

Here are just a few of them:

He/she is not good at xxx.

It can’t be done.

I don’t have the time.

He/she is not a sales person.

It’ll cost too much.

It would take too long to develop.

Believing your assumptions means that you will write people off, often without even having a conversation with them. Your imagination makes things up when you don’t understand something and an assumption is created about its meaning. Finally, when the truth is revealed, you may find you’ve totally misunderstood the whole situation and gotten it horribly wrong.

Here are some of the potential outcomes of making assumptions. You will:

Lose trust in others.

Become more reactive.

Stop the growth and development of others.

Miss opportunities.

Limit the potential of the team.

We tend to look for mirror images of ourselves in others. We assume that others think and feel the same way as we do and make the same judgments. We imagine the truth and don’t see the reality of how things are or the potential for what could be.

If we take time to understand WHY people behave the way they do, then we can make better judgments of their behavior and possibly prevent ourselves from making some errors of judgment.

Here are a few ways to avoid making assumptions…

Have the courage to communicate when things feel uncomfortable – Instead of avoiding a conversation and sharing your fears with others, have a conversation with the person directly. You may be pleasantly surprised by the outcome! Have the courage to ask the questions and listen to the response with the intent to understand. Suspend your own pre-judgment of the situation.

Look for the potential in others – Don’t write people off too quickly with sweeping statements. People’s potential is unlimited. They may not be good at sales today, but if you give them the tools, opportunity and encouragement to learn, you could help them transform their performance (and your business). Invest time with your people; be open to them growing.

Test your assumptions – How do you know that what you are thinking is real? What evidence do you have? You might be wrong! You could be creating a bottleneck in your business because of your own lack of trust. Help others grow and move forward. Check in on your own thinking and turn it around. For example:

What if he/she was good at xxx?

I wonder if it’s possible to…

What if I created the time to…

What if I developed their sales skills?

Be extra vigilant when the relationship is one you know well – Most people aren’t telepathic… they don’t know what they don’t know! You might shutdown when things feel uncomfortable, especially around people that you know well. You might assume you know what the other person is thinking so you don’t say anything. Honestly, you have no idea what the other person might be thinking or feeling! If you don’t have the conversation, you might create discomfort and tension and give out the wrong message – one that says that you don’t care. The other person can’t read your mind and won’t always understand just because you think you know them well. Find your voice and always establish the truth.

Have you noticed that if you are really motivated to do something, then you’ll make time for it?

You are only as busy as you allow yourself to be!

I’m not saying that you are not busy – most of us are crazy-busy. The challenge for many of the people I coach is navigating the massive amount of distractions around them. They lack the focus and commitment to their time for their High Value Work and what’s important to them.

One of the main reasons for this is because there is too much to pay attention to!

We are living in an information-rich age; more information than ever before is at our finger-tips instantly and we try to take in all in and maximize it in the shortest amount of time. We literally haven’t got time to think things through because there are so many demands placed upon us. We have so much to pay attention to that our thinking becomes splattered and thinly spread. In other words – we give our attention away.

Your attention is everything! It’s one of your most valuable resources…

It makes you aware of your surroundings, critical for your well-being and keeps you safe by alerting you to danger. Attention also helps you learn and enables you to concentrate on what you need to do in any situation. It keeps you focused in the present moment.

How often do you say: “I’d love to… but I don’t have time!?”

Thinking time today is often seen as a luxury and compromised or sacrificed on the altar of busy-ness. It suppresses creativity.

Setting aside time to think and to relax is as important today as it has always been.

We live in such a fast-paced world and we burn through time so quickly. It’s easy to get lost in the thick of thin things!

I guarantee that the external pace of the world isn’t going to slow down. So you have to decide to consciously take some control back. Otherwise you will forever be lost in reactivity and chaos as you burn through time here on Earth.

How do you do this?

Start by thinning out the trivia – You know… the unimportant stuff that you just do. Where are you hemorrhaging your attention and time? Facebook? Searching the web? Getting involved in other people’s urgent agendas that are not important to you?

Do less and do it well – Get clear on what is important – plan and prioritize. Do one thing at a time and do it well. Doing fewer things at once can help you engage your thinking. So instead of chaos and reaction, you get to apply your attention and thinking. Honestly, multi-tasking doesn’t work and leaves your attention splattered. You forget things and are more likely to make mistakes.

Learn to say ‘No’ – You can’t do it all! Learn how to articulate this in a positive and assertive way with courage and consideration. Set some clear boundaries and stick to them. Respect yourself as much as the other people you serve. This is YOUR TIME to give and if you’re doing everything for everyone else, who is doing the important stuff for you?

Take time to make time – Schedule daily pockets of thinking time in advance every week and show up for them. If you create time to think about things, both short-term and the bigger picture, you will get things right the first time by giving yourself valuable space to focus on one thought. You don’t have to think alone – having a conversation with a like-minded person can share knowledge and wisdom and you can bounce ideas and crystalize your thinking. Consult and talk with a thinking partner.

Protect your attention – We are hard wired for distraction. It is an instinctive reaction from prehistoric times when we’d be scanning our surroundings for predators. Of course, a lack of focus could be due to extreme tiredness, or low self-esteem. Our attention can have a huge impact on the quality of our life. It takes a lot of investment of time and energy. You can practice it, develop it and strengthen your skill by doing some simple things such as:

Disconnecting from the internet for 2-3 hours a day to focus on the current task.

Turn off your phone in meetings and when engaging with others – give them your full attention.

Journal/keep a log of your daily activities – it’s a free writing activity that helps you focus on facts and feelings. It will help you to stay focused and give you valuable reflection and thinking time.

Regular exercise and eating healthily can really help too.

Be present in the moment wherever you are. Showing up and fully participating in this will help you focus and learn.

Keep a list of your top 1-3 priorities for the week so you can get back on track again.

Take an extra moment – In every situation, just take an extra second or two to be aware of your attention and where it is focused. Re-calibrate and re-align consciously to your intention and make sense of what this situation requires.

Distraction is everywhere – it’s woven in to the fabric of our modern world. Therefore, if you truly want to live an amazing life and be successful at work, you need to be conscious and deliberate as to where you place your attention. Energy flows where attention goes! Use it wisely! It only takes a few moments to re-align and put your attention on your intention… Keep recalibrating to stay on course.

“Many leaders fail to gain knowledge because they have too much to do – they’re going too fast and trying to accomplish too much.”

~ Kenneth Blanchard, Author

From my experience, many leaders put their own development needs last and fail to grow their own knowledge and skills. They are too busy working at a crazy pace to get everything done and try to keep up with the never ending flow of work. So they become stagnant and even fall behind.

I was recently working with a client called Tom who was overwhelmed. He was trying to accomplish too much and was totally unaware of (and frightened to recognize) his own limitations. He actually thought that others would see his limitations as a flaw or a weakness and therefore a poor leader. He started to compensate for this by trying to be everything to everyone instead of stepping back and admitting his own learning needs.

He was great at developing his team and making sure that they sharpened their saw, as Stephen Covey describes it! But he certainly didn’t practice what he preached!

Over time, he became the bottleneck in his business: his lack of up to date knowledge and skills were slowing his team down. His team started to become frustrated as he became more of a micro-manager, taking more and more on because of his own lack of self-confidence.

Taking time to learn was the last thing on his mind! He needed to keep things going so couldn’t possibly spend time on himself. He just didn’t have the time and was unwilling to step away from the business to learn and grow.

His unwillingness to learn was detrimental to the team and their effectiveness, even though that was the last thing he wanted. He hadn’t realized his own impact on the rest of the team.

Tom is typical of many leaders. It’s easy to get distracted by internal or external factors that steal your attention and focus. If your attention is splattered and you’re trying to do too much, this lack of focus can be disastrous. You become overwhelmed and burnt out, your team becomes confused and demotivated, and your performance (and theirs) dips significantly.

Tom learned the hard way the importance of consistently making time to gain knowledge is essential for his and the team’s success. He needed to focus on growing himself if he wanted to grow the team, and ultimately their success.

You’ve probably heard of the saying: Take time to make time…

Learning is not a one and done event as a leader and there is NO arrival! Things will always need to be on your radar and being open and committed to learning and growth has got to become a part of who you are as a leader if you truly want to be successful.

Here’s what taking time to make time looks like for an effective leader:

1. Understand your people – Get to know and recognize the differences of the people that you work with. Understanding WHY people behave the way they do can help you to influence them and help to reduce any conflict as it arises because you are aware of their filters and preferences. You GET them! How are you different to them? How can you best serve people?

2. Leaders are readers – Learn about leadership by reading or listening to audios or watching DVD’s. Reading is a great foundation for acquiring knowledge and developing yourself. It’s a powerful, fast way to learn for many people. Thirty minutes a day listening to an audio as you travel to or from work is an easy way to get started – that’s 2.5 hours a week!

3. Take responsibility for your growth – Stop putting this off! Accept that part of being a leader is your ability to be open and honest with yourself. No one is great at EVERYTHING! Understand your strengths and weaknesses – it’s okay, we all have them! Play to your strengths and look for ways to outsource things that are not your genius work. What are your learning and leading preferences?

4. Every leader is a learner – All great leaders are constantly learning and growing. As you develop, new challenges present themselves so you are continually stretching out of your comfort zone to create a new normal. You are ALWAYS growing. This includes understanding and gaining knowledge of your industry or business and how it is changing.

5. Reach out for help – You may already be proactive at helping others grow and encouraging them to reach out to you for help. NOW it’s your turn! Look for great teachers or mentors who can help you to grow. This is NOT a sign of weakness it is a sign of leadership! Learn from people who are already experienced in what you want to learn. One of best ways of learning is then to reach out to others and teach it to them… passing the knowledge and skills forward to your team!

If you’re going too fast, you’ll not accomplish anything. So slow down to speed up!

Make your continuous learning an essential part of your business strategy, whether you work in corporate or you own your own business.

“In reality, physical energy is the fundamental source of fuel, even if our work is almost completely sedentary. It not only lies at the heart of alertness and vitality but also affects our ability to manage our emotions, sustain concentration, think creativity, and even maintain our commitment to whatever mission we are on.”

~ Jim Loehr, Author

I was recently working with a coaching client (…we’ll call him John) who was tired and couldn’t understand why despite working longer hours, his performance wasn’t as good as it used to be. He was throwing more hours in to the job in hope that he could get everything done.

Believe it or not, John had actually become disconnected from his body!

Let me explain…

In his determination to get things done, John had become unconscious to the need to replenish or even manage his own energy levels. Especially his own physical energy reserves that were being depleted.

John described his life as numb. He was busy ALL the time. He was struggling to keep up with the heavy demands of his job and trying to get everything done.

Although he knew that exercising and sleeping well were important, he saw them as a luxury in his busy life: He just didn’t have the time. His diet wasn’t healthy either, as he had gotten into the habit of grabbing food on-the-go: convenient fast food – snacky, carb-loaded stuff. He’d put on weight in the last 18-months while working in his current role.

Here’s the thing…

Many of us lead relatively sedentary lives.

What we do is measured and evaluated with our minds, rather than our bodies (unless we are professional athletes!). Most jobs involve sitting at a desk and working at a computer or attending meetings. Performance is measured by hard work – sitting down and getting the job done!

The choices John had made were depleting his ability to concentrate, think creatively and manage his emotions. He was less tolerant of other people and would get anxious and frustrated when things weren’t going well.

He started to realize the impact these factors had on his performance at work. He had gotten stuck in a pattern of low motivation to change despite knowing the consequences of his choices.

The size of your energy reserves depends on the quality of:

The foods that you eat

The amount of sleep you get

The degree of intermittent recovery you allow yourself during the day

Your level of fitness

Here are some ways to top up your physical energy reserves:

1. Conscious eating – Take time to eat healthy food regularly. The impact of being hungry has an impact on your ability to function. Breakfast is critical! The frequency of how often you eat also has an impact on your capacity to stay fully focused and engaged to sustain high performance. Listen to your body… remove the junk food and add healthier options such as fruit instead of cookies and crisps!

2. Change your sleeping patterns – Create an evening routine. Go to bed earlier and wake up earlier. An evening routine might be turning the laptop off at 8pm, having a bath and reading before you go to sleep. Most of us need 7-8 hours sleep per night.

3. Drink more water – Most of us are de-hydrated! We don’t drink enough water throughout the day. Drinking water is one of the most undervalued sources of energy renewal. This is a key factor in improving your physical energy levels.

4. Regular moderate exercise – Despite knowing that taking some regular exercise is beneficial, most people do almost none! Twenty to thirty minutes a day of continuous exercise, a minimum of three times per week, can make a huge difference. Get outside and walk. Be prepared to stretch out of your comfort zone and feel a little discomfort. NOT having the time is an EXCUSE! Including this into your day can help release tension and help you to manage your emotions better.

5. Take regular breaks – To maintain full engagement we must take a break to recover every 90 minutes. Step away from what you are doing, stretch and allow yourself to recover. Build some recovery rituals into your life. This includes down time on an evening and during the weekend.

“Energy is simply the capacity to do work. Our most fundamental need as human beings is to spend and recover energy.”

~ Jim Loehr, Author

We need energy to function and perform.

Our bodies require rest and recovery time in addition to the absence from work if you want to be healthy, happy and deliver high performance.

Balancing stress and recovering is essential in all aspects of our daily lives.

Most people in business (working in corporate or for themselves) have an imbalance of expending energy as opposed to recovering it. Over time, our energy reserves are depleted and this can lead to burnout.

It happened to me many years ago and I was fortunate enough to see this as a wake up call to change my lifestyle and approach to my working life. Others aren’t so lucky.

Most of us tend to unconsciously assume that we can indefinitely spend our mental and emotional energy without replenishing any at a physical or spiritual level. Our balance becomes skewed as we work longer hours, sacrificing our weekends and evenings.

Over time our performance is compromised, as we falsely believe that being successful means working harder, and this involves working long hours all the time. Some working cultures actively encourage this (I know this was true when I worked as an international consultant).

I’ve learned that spending and recovering energy has a natural flow to it, a bit like a tide ebbing and flowing. You’ve got to allow a natural rhythm in alignment with your body. Don’t just take my word for it – our breathing, heartbeat and blood pressure all have natural rhythms to them!

By starving your body of energy you are messing with the natural rhythms that effect your health, happiness and performance. No wonder you start to feel tired and exhausted!

Working at a crazy pace without breaks is actually addictive (you see it all the time in the work place). We are all copying each other heading towards overwhelm and burnout! If you don’t do what everyone else is doing, then you feel that you aren’t performing as well.

In our reluctance to stop and replenish, we turn to artificial stimulants to keep our bodies alert to meet the busy demands in our lives, such as caffeine and drugs. To help us relax, we use alcohol or sleeping pills to calm us down. These artificial stimulants become addictive over time as we rely on them to keep us going.

Are you drinking several cups of coffee during the day to stay on it? Are you then going home and drinking several glasses of wine at night to relax and chill? If so, you are messing with your rhythms and masking the depletion of your energy.

Here are some tips to increase your energy and avoid burnout even in the most demanding job:

Create circuit breakers in your routine – Our bodies are not designed to sit at a computer and stare at a screen answering emails all day, or sitting inactive in long meetings. Create breaks in your day – get up, move around, go for a 10-15 minute walk to shake off the atrophy. Drink plenty of water and go for a pee when you need one (seriously, I know people who forget to go all day!).

Schedule personal time with family and friends – Mark days or long weekends and holidays in advance in your calendar. These are not compromise-able! One of my clients takes a long weekend (3-days) every month to be fully present with her family. The more important we see our work and ourselves; the more we become unavailable to our friends and family. I coached a guy once who has lost all his friends because of his addiction to his job. He was very lonely.

Set some boundaries – Be realistic about what you can achieve and prioritize around your High Value Work (HVW). Minimize any distractions and stay focused on what’s important. Plan, prioritize and say NO to things that don’t serve you or your goals.

Stretch – don’t splatter – yourself! – High performance requires us to step out of our comfort zone and create a new normal. To build new capacity mentally and emotionally you have to exceed your muscles’ current capacity past it’s current limit for short periods of time followed by adequate recovery (just like building muscle tone at the gym). This is where you get growing pains and feel short-term discomfort as you are learning.

Take up a hobby – Yep… I’m serious! There’s almost a perception that taking time to rest and enjoy something that you like doing is a weakness because surely no one has time to do what your like doing, right?! Resting is seen as laziness! I enjoy walking and surrounding myself with nature is uplifting mentally, physically, emotionally…and spiritually. Make time for something that you enjoy each week, reading? Photography?

As a coach, I’ve witnessed remarkable changes in the energy and performance of people (including myself) because they consciously and regularly renew their energy. They are healthy, happy, high performers and are fully engaged in their lives.

I’ve come to realise that success is NOT about doing more. It’s about taking consistent action towards your goal and completing things.

And often, the ONE THING that gets in your way of your success… is YOU!

Why do we get in our own way?

Why do we sabotage our own success?

Life is busy and it’s hard to stay focused with so much going on. It’s difficult to be fully present and focused on what’s important when you have so many demands on your attention.

Distractions steal your time and lead you further away from your goal. It’s easy to use them as an excuse (or a convenient alibi) for your lack of success. Over time your goal remains just another idea as things begin to fall away.

Here’s a real life example…

Jenny started our first coaching session by describing how disappointed she was with the progress of her year so far. She’d had great plans… but everything had fallen away since setting her goals in January.

She’d not made any meaningful progress and was stuck in the same old story cycle, blaming everyone and everything for her lack of progress. Deep down she was feeling sorry for herself that she had no time to make anything happen.

She blamed constant interruptions for her lack of productivity.

This year wasn’t going the way she had wanted.

Then she started ‘should-ing…’

Her conversation was peppered with phrases like:

“I know I should be more…”

“I should have started earlier…”

“I should have focused on my goals and not allowed myself to become distracted…”

She was too busy wrapped up in her own excuses. Our excuses are convenient external justifications for not getting things done, that we share with everyone else.

Jenny was also exerting a lot of effort and energy to maintain her alibi and at the same time creating self-imposed disappointment and grief. Her alibi had become more attractive than taking the harder path towards achieving her goals. She’d put extra demands on herself and then baled out with excuses instead of taking action.

Most of us are undisciplined in our approach and it’s easy to become distracted and unfocused. When we’re under pressure we move out of our left-brain – logical thinking, into the right brain – emotive thinking, and it’s difficult to be rational from this place.

I helped her realize that she’d just got stuck in some bad habits, a lack of boundaries and she wasn’t being selective about where to put her attention.

Here’s how to make meaningful progress and get BACK ON TRACK:

Re-align to your goal – Get clear on WHAT you want to achieve and WHY you want to do it. Write down your intention and keep this in a place where you can see it regularly.

Stop avoiding – Decide that you’ll no longer use excuses to keep you from your goal. Look out for convenient excuses that have taken you off track in the past. Do something that you’ve been avoiding today! Write down your excuses and turn them around with an action step instead, then go make it happen!

Not interested in the easy way out – Let your sub-conscious know that you’re no longer taking the path of convenience. Be your own cheerleader and congratulate yourself for having the courage and determination to move into feeling uncomfortable. Be open to making difficult choices rather than the usual easier ones. This is how you’ll create success.

Create a process – Write down what needs to be done. Create a system or process for things to happen – one step at a time. The only way you’ll be successful is to have a plan and follow the plan. What is the next step? Have discipline to follow the steps one at a time, as this will create momentum.

Take conscious action – Take small action steps consistently and make it a habit. Consciously check in weekly with your progress and schedule dates and times in your planner to keep things moving – little and often.

Get some support – Shifting habits and creating new ways of working requires discipline and persistence if you’re determined to achieve your goals. In other words – you have to do the work! Hiring a coach is like investing in your success. A good coach provides a high level of support and guidance to help you get BACK ON TRACK as you get clear, claim your power, take action and create new outcomes in your life and work.